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| Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) is a candidate for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party. Gabbard is pictured above in 2008, training at Fort Hood for her second combat deployment in Iraq. Gabbard took lessons of war to heart, becoming along with Sen. Bernie sanders the leading peace candidate for the presidency. Reads Rep. Gabbard's candidate website: The first day Tulsi arrived at her camp in Iraq, she saw a large sign at one of the gates that read, "Is today the day?" It was a blunt reminder that today may be the day that any of the soldiers would be called to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country. It caused her to reflect on her own life and the reality that each of us could die at any moment. While serving in a base in the Sunni Triangle at the height of the war, Tulsi had the heart-wrenching daily responsibility of going through the list of every injury and casualty in the entire theatre of operations, looking to see if any soldiers in her unit were on the list, so she could ensure they received the care they needed and their families were notified. She was hit with the enduring pain and hardship of her brothers and sisters in uniform, and the stress and pressure on their families. She wondered if those who voted to send soldiersto Iraq really understood why they were there —if lawmakers and the President reflected daily on each death, each injury,and the immeasurably high cost of war. Having experienced first-hand the true cost of war, she made a personal vow to find a way to ensure that our country doesn’t continue repeating the mistakes of the past, sending our troops into war without a clear mission, strategy, or purpose. |
Zweifel takes Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson (R) to task for the senator's attacks against enemies of Pres Donald Trump among the executive branch:
"Before Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman even appeared before the Intelligence Committee's public meetings last week, Johnson disparaged the Iraq War hero and security council specialist and questioned his credibility.
'A significant number of bureaucrats and staff members within the executive branch have never accepted President Trump as legitimate and resent his unorthodox style and his intrusion onto their 'turf,' Johnson declared in a letter to committee members. ... "
"Not a scintilla of proof. Just innuendo the way Joe McCarthy mastered it."
Thing is, Ron Johnson is right and his fact statement (right or wrong) is not innuendo. Few non-political national security and foreign policy staff in the executive branch appear to be political fans of the lunatic in the White House, a fact acknowledged by those who rightfully challenge Trump's many counter-punches against such opponents.
Consider as well that McCarthy's smears against so-called Reds are hardly the same as noting anti-Trump sentiment, the existence of which is surly to the credit of those holding to these viewpoints, though our senator does not believe so, (Timpf, The New Republic). See also the new book, A Warning, by Anonymous.
But Zweifel's use of McCarthyism is preposterous when considered under the light of the McCarthyite work of the political party for which The Capital Times fronts — the Democratic Party.
Johnson's stated opinion regarding anti-Trump bias in the executive branch is invisible next to the sustained bombardment of presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D) by the Democratic Party establishment and its major media allies, MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post.
The Capital Times like every other Democratic Party organ is silent on the real perpetrators of neo-McCarthism today.
Consider Rep. Gabbard (D-Hawaii), a military combat Army veteran, is a fierce opponent of war and American empire, positions that have provoked defamation and character assassination on a level that Ron Johnson could not approach in 1,000 lifetimes.
Writes James Carden in The Nation:
The war of words between former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and current 2020 presidential aspirant Tulsi Gabbard has been, in some respects, clarifying. Clinton’s insinuation that Russia is 'grooming' the Hawaiian Democrat for a third-party run in order to influence the outcome of next year’s election, instead of provoking a 'have you no shame' response from the establishment media, was gleefully repeated by such establishment fixtures as the journalist Jonathan Alter and the scholar Norman Ornstein. In other words, McCarthyism has gone mainstream. ...So, where are the Dave Zwiefels and other Democratic Party allies? They are either silent or complicit.
Left-leaning outlets and think tanks like MSNBC (Hardball host Chris Matthews has decreed that loyal 'Americans don’t go to Russia'), The Daily Beast, New York magazine, Think Progress, the Center for American Progress, and The New Republic have all recklessly accused scholars, journalists, and activists with whom they disagree of being Kremlin 'toadies' and 'useful idiots' — this last, of course, having been a common trope marched out by the John Birch right during the Cold War, and even in the years following.
For a critical piece of reporting on the topic, see the interview with Glenn Greenwald on Rising, The Hill.tv with Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti. [For more continuing coverage of the topic, see also the Jimmy Dore Show, Secular Talk with Kyle Kulinski, and the Rational National with David Doel.]:
Said Saagar Enjeti in the interview with Greenwald: "Glenn, one of the things that really struck me yesterday [Nov 19 hearing before the House Intelligence Committee] was that there was actually a particular question from the Democratic [Party] counsel in which they asked Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, they said: 'Were you aware that the president was departing from official U.S. policy?'"
"It struck me very much that the national security state was the one that was setting official U.S. policy and the duly elected president was departing from that?"
Replied Greenwald in part:
That's been one of the primary themes of the Trump presidency. This idea that's what's most dangerous about Trump is that he believes in a whole set of foriegn policy beliefs that he actually campaigned on and that therefore were ratified by the American people, that are dangerous because the CIA, and the Pentagon and the bipartisan military and think-tank class in Washington doesn't accept.
What I find actually dangerous, independent of those debates, is the idea that it's not the elected president, but the whatever you want to call them — Dwight Eisenhower called them the 'military-industrial complex,' people have called them the 'national security blob,' the 'permanent power faction' in Washington — the idea that they and not our elected officials determine foreign policy.
Obviously, there's this narrow question in impeachment about whether Trump did typical Trumpian things in kind-of linking the investigation of the Bidens to military aid, but the much broader and more important theme is anger over Trump for his foreign policy views about Russia and Ukraine. ...
That's the real issue driving the impeachment hearings, and this much narrower issue is just a pretext.
The idea that Sen Johnson, Greenwald, Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti share is skepticism that a permanent-power faction in D.C. should determine foriegn policy, national security and empire. Departure from the permanent-power faction's policy is exemplified by Rep. Gabbard and to a lesser extent in practice — Trump.
Tulsi Gabbard, along with Bernie Sanders, is the preeminent peace candidate. For their stands on war and peace, Gabbard and Sanders are near-constanly derided as doing 'Russia's work.'
That's McCartyite and this deserves challenge from those claiming fighting McCarthism as political heritage.
